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How to visualise a purpose? How to share a vision? How to tell your story? Quite often organisation have a vision, a mission statement (for their org, their product, their team…) But words don’t convey the message. What you should do it show, don’t tell!

Why do we do the things we do? What motivates a person, what drives a team? What’s holding a team back? Mgt 3.0 has defined 10 intrinsic motivators (desires) – in the “movingmotivators” exercise you can discover and reflect upon what motivates you and your team.

More about extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, 10 intrinsic motivators, and moving motivators game.

“Insanity is doing something over and over again and expecting a different result.”

Insanity is doing something over and over again and expecting a different result. If you evaluate objectively what you’re doing – over and over again – and you’re not satisfied with the output – why would you keep repeating it? Humans are creatures of habit and routine. If you’d like to change something in your routine, you should focus on small and incremental changes. How does this work in groups of people? At home… , at work? We would like to improve our behavior and practices, but the daily routine often prevents us.

Are you all professional at work? No chit chat, no small talk, not sharing private stuff? Well, you’re not the only one. In most projects and environments I’ve worked, there’s not much sharing of private stuff; and the most “coffee talk” I hear is about work-related topics. Then again, I do ask how was my colleague’s weekend, and if anything special happened?

In organizations, most often responsibilities and the level of authority are not clear (cf. difference between Responsibility and Authority). This concerns who’s responsible for what – who has the authority to perform certain actions, to take ownership of specific tasks, etc? Most often, one has to discover or figure out along the way what level of authority he/she has.

People who are proactive may take more ownership and proceed with actions, till that moment a superior intervenes to set some boundaries. This can be quite counter-productive and frustrating. Rarely, these boundaries are clearly set from the beginning. Some people do not really care about these blurry boundaries of authority, and will delegate all kind of “accountability” to managers higher up (in case of situations going wrong).

If you are serious about setting boundaries of authority, and you want to delegate real authority to teams in the company, action should be taken to make these boundaries clear.

A great tool to do this kind of exercise, is delegation poker by Management 3.0.

Receiving a thank you is great, but actually showing appreciation to colleagues, friends, family for something they’ve done for you is even more satisfying! In a professional context, showing gratitude is happening too less – because of different reasons: it’s uncommon (regarded as ‘not done’, it’s not part of the culture, etc). Although said and proven in research, showing gratitude is a great intrinsic incentive: this is essential to keep your employees motivated! Organizations should be as aware about intrinsic motivators as extrinsic motivators.